Most everyone is familiar with the phrase “the customer
is always right” however we are all pretty aware that this might not always be
the case. Recently I was speaking with a colleague who was explaining that they
had one team in particular which had some application issues but that they were
(in their words) difficult to deal with far more than anyone else.

I asked what the primary problem was with the application
for this team and they said that they really weren’t even clear on that. For the
most part their responses were one word. “Slow, unresponsive, painful”, as well
as a few others which I won’t repeat.

For some reason I had a flashback to a time when I was
working in a restaurant where I would regularly get the same one word
complaints. A mentor I had at the time said “If you’re not part of the solution
you are part of the problem.” He went on to say that when people complain in
short one word responses that they may have just come to the end of their rope.
So take that into account.

Find a way to generate some dialog on what would make the
situation better, or in other cases find out why there seems to be a
communications breakdown between them and yourselves. In some cases you will
find that the bigger issue isn’t the application error which they are
reporting, rather it could be the ability to escalate the issues in the first
place.

Get the customer to outline what they would like to see
happen. Keep in mind that the customer may be right but you also need to be
able to deliver on what those expectations look like. Far too often the promise
of over delivering will make the situation worse. Like everything else keep the
improvements small and manageable and ensure that you solicit feedback from the
business customer.